Greg Shahade's dispatch from Las Vegas, The $50,000 game, struck our readers and our judges with its honesty and humor. Also check the original article to see the comments. So many chessplayers dabble or take poker up seriously, that it is an unavoidable topic in chess journalism. Jerry Hanken's article from yesterday, on the Western Class Championships even touched on it when writing about Eugene Yanayt. In the first redesigned issue of Chess Life Magazine (June 06), Greg's former highschool team-mate and current friend, chess player turned poker player Ben Johnson wrote about playing in a chess tournament in Iceland after a long poker hiatus. On behalf of chess, we urge you to re-read our top ten reasons not to quit chess for poker. Despite being a professional poker player, Greg's passion is still for chess, evident from the time and effort he spends organizing the U.S. Chess League.

This was amazingly entertaining to me and gave me an insight into the world of young professional poker players that one doesn’t get from watching such shows as the World Series of Poker on ESPN2. To this day I simply cannot imagine being able to bet $50,000 on anything—much less to do so when I was in my early 20s. The article was hilarious, and I remember posting a comment about the cat pictures and Greg’s choice of aisles in the grocery store to celebrate his victory (the pet food aisle—ha!). While the chess was, by the very nature of the bet, not very high level, I laughed a lot and enjoyed this view into Greg’s world. I still find myself talking to other people about this article to this day- Mike Cornett

Very entertaining story and who knows if it is actually real or the result of creative fiction. If real, hope the IRS wasn’t watching- Michael Atkins

This article was by far the most entertaining of the year. When a writer picks a topic that not many people would have been able to fathom beforehand, then he has grabbed the attention of his readers. And by writing about in the first person, CLO readers got a unique psychological perspective of how a strong player approaches an odds match with a huge payoff. The sarcasm was plentiful and entertaining, with quips like, "As in most practice games, we were playing for $5,000," and, "I informed him that [en passant] would be legal." This was another good omen for my chances." He did not let what happens in Vegas stay there, and readers were richer for it- Michael Klein